Pulickel Ajayan

Rice University, USA

Pulickel M. Ajayan is a pioneer in the area of nanotechnology. He has published more than 1100 journal papers earning more than 175,000 citations and h-index of ~200 (google scholar). His work covers diverse areas of nanomaterials including nanoparticles, nanotubes, 2D materials, nanocomposite, energy storage materials and 3D printing. He is the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson professor of Engineering at Rice University and the founding chair of the department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering. He is the recipient of several awards such as the Spiers memorial award, MRS medal, Alexander von Humboldt-Helmoltz senior award, and lifetime nanotechnology award from the Houston Technology Center. He received Docteur Honoris Causa from the Universite Catholique de of Louvain and distinguished alumni recognition from his Alma Mater Banaras Hindu University and the Materials Science department at Northwestern University.

Alicia Forment-Aliaga

University of Valencia, Spain

Alicia Forment-Aliaga (Valencia, 1976) is a researcher at the Molecular Science Institute (ICMol) and a senior lecturer in the School of Chemistry at the University of Valencia (UVEG), Spain. She graduated in Chemistry and carried out her PhD on molecular magnetism at the UVEG, supervised by Prof. E. Coronado and Prof. F.M. Romero. Between 2004-2008 she joined Prof. K. Kern’s group as a postdoctoral researcher at Max-Planck Institute for Solid Sate Research in Stuttgart, Germany. During this period, she was awarded with different competitive postdoctoral grants for developing her research on molecular electronics. Since July 2008 she works at ICMol at the UVEG, in Prof. E. Coronado’s group. This period comprises a postdoctoral Juan de la Cierva contract and a tenure-track Ramón y Cajal contract, both competitive contracts granted by the Spanish Government, and her current position as senior lecturer. At the ICMol she has developed a line of research in molecular surface engineering and in the last years, she has also started working on 2D materials. Particularly, she has driven her research into four specific goals: (1) Non-conventional lithographies for the organization of molecular systems; (2) formation of self-assembled monolayers for molecular spintronics; (3) scanning force microscopies for surface modification and characterization and (4) 2D materials, targeting their exfoliation, molecular functionalization and application in different areas.

Daria Andreeva-Baeumler

The National University of Singapore, Singapore

Alicia Forment-Aliaga (Valencia, 1976) is a researcher at the Molecular Science Institute (ICMol) and a senior lecturer in the School of Chemistry at the University of Valencia (UVEG), Spain. She graduated in Chemistry and carried out her PhD on molecular magnetism at the UVEG, supervised by Prof. E. Coronado and Prof. F.M. Romero. Between 2004-2008 she joined Prof. K. Kern’s group as a postdoctoral researcher at Max-Planck Institute for Solid Sate Research in Stuttgart, Germany. During this period, she was awarded with different competitive postdoctoral grants for developing her research on molecular electronics. Since July 2008 she works at ICMol at the UVEG, in Prof. E. Coronado’s group. This period comprises a postdoctoral Juan de la Cierva contract and a tenure-track Ramón y Cajal contract, both competitive contracts granted by the Spanish Government, and her current position as senior lecturer. At the ICMol she has developed a line of research in molecular surface engineering and in the last years, she has also started working on 2D materials. Particularly, she has driven her research into four specific goals: (1) Non-conventional lithographies for the organization of molecular systems; (2) formation of self-assembled monolayers for molecular spintronics; (3) scanning force microscopies for surface modification and characterization and (4) 2D materials, targeting their exfoliation, molecular functionalization and application in different areas.

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Claudia Backes

Heidelberg University, Germany

Claudia is Chair Professor of Physical Chemistry of Nanomaterials at Kassel. Claudia is a chemist by training and has received her Ph.D with honors in 2011 from the University of Erlangen, Germany working under the supervision of Andreas Hirsch. After some time as deputy executive director in the Erlangen Cluster of Excellence “Engineering of Advanced Materials” Claudia received a fellowship grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 2012 and moved to Jonathan Coleman’s group at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. In 2015, she returned to Germany and started her independent research at the Chair of Applied Physical Chemistry at Heidelberg University funded through the prestigious Emmy Noether funding from the German Research Foundation from 2016. In 10/2021, she was appointed to her current position. Claudia’s research interests are in liquid exfoliation, nanosheet size control and size-dependent properties, chemical modification and production of composites and hybrid structures.

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Marie-Laure Bocquet

Ecole Normale Supérieure, France

Marie-Laure Bocquet (born 1968) graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon in 1993, performed her phD about the simulation of STM images under the supervision of Philippe Sautet in the Chemistry Laboratory of ENS Lyon. She is now a Director of Research at the CNRS in the Chemistry Laboratory of ENS Paris, where her research interests are focused on the elucidation of chemical processes occuring at metallic, oxide or graphenic surfaces either in vacuum or in water media . They are mainly driven by high-resolution data acquired with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope STM or nanofluidic measurements in collaborative experimental groups.

Cinzia Casiraghi

University of Manchester, UK

Prof Casiraghi holds a Chair in Nanoscience at the Department of Chemistry, University of Manchester (UK). She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Huiming Cheng

Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Prof. Hui-Ming Cheng graduated from Hunan University, China in 1984 and received his Ph. D in 1992 from Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMR CAS). He is the director of both the Advanced Carbon Research Division of Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, IMR CAS since 2001, and the Institute of Technology for Carbon Neutrality, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2021. He is a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences and a fellow of TWAS.

His research activities focus on carbon nanotubes, graphene, other 2D materials, energy storage materials, photocatalytic materials, and bulk carbon materials. He has published over 800 papers with a WoS citation of >110,000 and an h-index of 143, and is a Highly Cited Researcher in both chemistry and materials science fields. He has given over 190 plenary/keynote/invited lectures at various conferences, and won three State Natural Science Award of China (2006, 2017 and 2020), Charles E. Pettinos Award from American Carbon Society, Felcht Award from SGL, Germany, and ACS Nano Lecture Award. He used to be an Editor of Carbon from 2000 to 2015 and Editor-in-Chief of New Carbon Materials from 1998 to 2015, and now is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Energy Storage Materials and Associate Editor of Science China Materials.

Manish Chhowalla

University of Cambridge, UK

Manish Chhowalla is the Goldsmiths’ Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge. His research interests are in the fundamental studies of atomically thin two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). In particular, his group studies the optical and electronic properties of different phases of 2D TMDs. He has demonstrated that it is possible to induce phase transformations in atomically thin materials and utilize phases with disparate properties for field effect transistors, catalysis, and energy storage. Prof Chhowalla is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society, Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry and Churchill College. He is an Associate Editor of ACS Nano.

Camilla Coletti

Italian Institute of Technology, Italy

Camilla Coletti is a tenured Senior Scientist of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) and principal investigator of the research line 2D Materials Engineering. She is the coordinator of the Center for Nanotechnology Innovation (CNI@NEST) of Pisa and of the Graphene Labs. She has been hired by IIT in 2011 after being an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research of Stuttgart (Germany). She received her PhD degree from the University of South Florida in 2007 and her MS degree from the University of Perugia in 2004 (with honors, both in Electrical Engineering). She is expert in the synthesis of highly-crystalline 2D materials via chemical vapour deposition (CVD) and in the investigation of their electronic, chemical and structural properties. Her research is focused on: (i) synthesis and integration of scalable 2D materials for optoelectronics, photonics and biomedicine; (ii) engineering the interface and properties of 2D heterostructures. In her work she applies her background of surface scientist to impact science and technology of 2D materials. Over the years, within IIT, she has directly supervised over 40 students and postdocs, with a great attention in creating an international and gender fair environment. She has received funding for over 4 M€ from competitive grants and industrial contracts. Overall, she is author of more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, authored 4 book chapters, edited 1 book, filed several international patents (holds 3) and delivered more than 50 invited talks at international conferences.

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Cristina Gomez-Navarro

The Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

Cristina Gomez-Navarro is a professor at the Condensed Matter Department, Faculty of Science, at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain and serves as Steering committee of the Condensed Matter Physics Center (IFIMAC).

Her research is focus on electrical and mechanical properties of low dimensional materials and Scanning Probe Microscopy related techniques. A particular focus on controlled introduction of atomic scale defects in 2D materials and their related properties has been the topic for her research during the past decade.

She completed her PhD at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2005, then moved to the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research where she was awarded with a Humbold fellowship. Since 2009 she co-leads the Nanoforces Lab at UAM.

Abdoulaye Djire

Texas A&M University College of Engineering, USA

Dr. Abdoulaye Djire is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (affiliated) at Texas A&M University. Dr. Djire received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan and completed his postdoctoral training in the Chemistry and Nanoscience Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Dr. Djire is the recipient of the 2019 DuPont GOLD Award. Dr. Djire’s research focuses on understanding the structure-function relationships controlling the reactivity of 2D MXenes for applications in energy storage and conversion.

Xiangfeng Duan

University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Dr. Duan received his B.S. Degree from University of Science and Technology of China in 1997, and Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 2002. He was a Founding Scientist and then Manager of Advanced Technology at Nanosys Inc., a nanotechnology startup founded based partly on his doctoral research. Dr. Duan joined UCLA with a Howard Reiss Career Development Chair in 2008, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012 and Full Professor in 2013. Dr. Duan’s research interest includes nanoscale materials, devices and their applications in future electronic and energy technologies. Dr. Duan has published over 300 papers with over 80,000 citations, and holds 52 issued US patents. Dr. Duan has received many awards for his pioneering research in nanoscale science and technology, including MIT Technology Review Top-100 Innovator Award, NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, NSF Career Award, Alpha Chi Sigma Glen T. Seaborg Award, Herbert Newby McCoy Research Award, US Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), ONR Young Investigator Award, DOE Early Career Scientist Award, Human Frontier Science Program Young Investigator Award, Dupont Young Professor, Journal of Materials Chemistry Lectureship, International Union of Materials Research Society and Singapore Materials Research Society Young Researcher Award, the Beilby Medal and Prize, the Nano Korea Award, International Society of Electrochemistry Zhao-Wu Tian Prize for Energy Electrochemistry, Science China Materials Innovation Award, AIP Horizons Lectureship, NanoMaterials Science Young Scientist Award and Materials Research Society Middle Career Researcher Award. He is currently an elected Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry and Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Maryam Ebrahimi

Lakehead University, Canada

Dr. Maryam Ebrahimi is an Assistant Professor and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Low-Dimensional Nanomaterials at Lakehead University, Canada.

She obtained her PhD in Physical Chemistry – Surface Science from the University of Waterloo in 2009, followed by postdoctoral research with Nobel Laureate John Polanyi at the University of Toronto (2009-2011), and at the University of California - Riverside (2011-2013). Afterwards, she was a Group Leader at the INRS - Energy, Materials, and Telecommunications Research Center (2014-2018) in Varennes, Quebec, Canada and at the Technical University of Munich, Germany (2018-2019). She has co-authored 40 papers in the Nature Publishing Group, the American Chemical Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry journals. She has previously co-supervised 6 PhDs and PDF, and is currently supervising 3 Undergraduates, 3 PhDs, and 1 PDF researcher. Since starting her independent career in mid-2019, she has received Tier 2 Canada Research Chair Award from the Government of Canada, as well as NSERC Discovery Grant, Canada Foundation for Innovation fund, and New Frontiers in Research Fund. Dr. Ebrahimi’s research focuses on the on-surface formation and atomic scale characterization of molecular-based and inorganic 2D materials using high-resolution scanning probe microscopy and surface characterization techniques, complemented with ab-initio theoretical calculations.

Xinliang Feng

TU Dresden, Germany

Prof. Feng is the head of the Chair of Molecular Functional Materials at Technische Universität Dresden, and a director at the Max-Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics. He has published more than 650 research articles which have attracted around 80000 citations with H-index of 140 (Google Scholar).

He has been awarded several prestigious prizes such as IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists (2009), European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant Award (2012), Journal of Materials Chemistry Lectureship Award (2013), ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship (2014), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC, 2014), Highly Cited Researcher (Thomson Reuters, 2014-2021), Small Young Innovator Award (2017), Hamburg Science Award (2017), EU-40 Materials Prize (2018), ERC Consolidator Grant Award (2018). He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences (2019), member of the Academia Europaea (2019), and member of the Germany’s Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech, 2021). He is an Advisory Board Member for Advanced Materials, Chemical Science, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, ChemNanoMat, Energy Storage Materials, Small Methods, Chemistry -An Asian Journal, Trends in Chemistry, etc. He is the Head of ESF Young Research Group "Graphene Center Dresden", Working Package Leader of WP Functional Foams & Coatings for European Commission’s pilot project “Graphene Flagship”, and spokesperson for the DFG Collaborative Research Center for the Chemistry of Synthetic 2D Materials (2020-).

Hongjun Gao

Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Professor GAO Hongjun, an experimental condensed matter physicist, is a Group Leader in the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He also serves as the Dean, School of Physical Sciences, U-CAS. He was born in Anhui Province in 1963 and obtained his Ph.D. degrees from Peking University in 1994. He was elected as a CAS Member in 2011 and Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS) in 2012. He was elected as a Member of the German National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

Dr. GAO served as the Vice President of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) from 2014 to 1015. He also acted as Scientific Secretary of the International Union of Vacuum Science, Technology, and Applications (IUVSTA) in the triennium 2004-2007, and as Chairman of the Nano Science & technology Division NSTD, IUVSTA (2010-2013). From 1997 to 2000, he worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as a Guest Scientist. He has served as an Associate Editor for Appl. Phys. Lett. from 2010 to 2018 and editorial board member for several international journals.

Dr. GAO has made significant contribution to the field of low-dimensional quantum nanostructures via scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy including the construction of novel quantum nanostructures and their physical properties. He has published more than 500 papers including 6 in Nature and Science. His total citations exceed 28000, and his H-index is 86. He has received numerous awards for his work, including awarded a Humboldt Research Award in 2010, the TWAS Prize in 2009, the Achievement in Asia Award (Robert Prize) of the Overseas Chinese Physics Association in 2008, the TAN KAH KEE Science Award in Mathematics and Physics, 2010, the Science and Technology Awards of the Ho Leung Ho Lee, 2012, and the Outstanding Science and Technology Achievement Prize of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2013.

Yury Gogotsi

Drexel University, USA

Dr. Yury Gogotsi is Distinguished University Professor and Charles T. and Ruth M. Bach Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University. He also serves as Director of the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute. He received his MS (1984) and PhD (1986) from Kiev Polytechnic and a DSc degree from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1995. His research group works on 2D carbides and nitrides (MXenes), nanostructured carbons, and other nanomaterials for energy, water and biomedical applications. He published more than 700 papers, which have been cited about 170,000 times. He has been recognized as Highly Cited Researcher in Chemistry and Materials Science, and Citations Laureate in Physics by Clarivate Analytics. He has received numerous awards for his research including a Chemistry of Materials Award from ACS, MRS Medal, S. Somiya Award from IUMRS, European Carbon Association Award, International Nanotechnology Prize (RUSNANOPrize), R&D 100 Awards from R&D Magazine and many other distinctions. He has been elected a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, World Academy of Ceramics, AAAS, MRS, ACerS, ECS, RSC and ISE. He holds honorary doctorates from several European universities.

Liv Hornekaer

Aarhus University, Denmark

Liv Hornekær holds a professor position at Aarhus University, where she also heads the Center of Excellence for Interstellar Catalysis. She received her PhD from Aarhus University in 2002, held a Carlsberg fellowship at University of Southern Denmark, followed by Steno and Skou fellowships at Aarhus University. She has received the EliteForsk prize and the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award. She has held ERC starting and consolidator grants and is a member of the Royal Danish Academy for Sciences and Letters. Her research interest center around surface reactions and surface functionalization. Specific focus areas are control of graphene electronic and chemical properties via functionalization, graphene coatings, surface astrochemistry and low temperature surface reactions.

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Liying Jiao

Tsinghua University, China

Liying Jiao is currently a Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University. She received her B.S. from Shandong University in 2003, and her Ph.D from Peking University in 2008. She performed postdoctoral research in Stanford University during 2008-2012. She joined the Tsinghua faculty in 2012 as an Associate Professor and was promoted to Full Professor in 2021. Her research is focused on the synthesis and electronic devices of low dimensional materials.

Ute Kaiser

Ulm University, Germany

Ute Kaiser received her Diploma in Crystallography, her PhD in Physics from the Humboldt University Berlin and her Habilitation in Experimental Physics from the Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena, Germany, in 2002. Since 2004 she is full professor at Ulm University in the Physics Department and Head of Ulm’s Materials Science Electron Microscopy Centre. Her research interests comprise the areas of TEM methods and instrumentation development, and applications; at present, her research activities are in the fields of battery, semiconductor, and catalysts materials. From 2009 till 2018 she was the Scientific Director of the SALVE (Sub Angstroem Low-Voltage Electron Microscopy) project to develop low-voltage transmission electron microscopy, including the development of the chromatic and spherical aberration-corrected instrument, sample preparation methods and contrast calculation at 20-80kV accelerating voltage. By means of this unique TEM instrument, she dedicates her work to unravel the crystallographic and electronic properties of low-dimensional materials. Ute Kaiser has more than 400 peer-reviewed articles, was „highly cited researcher“, is a frequently asked invited speaker at conferences and holds several honorary adjunct positions. She is currently the Physical-Sciences Editor for the Journal Micron.

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Young Hee Lee

Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea

Prof. Lee has been a full professor of the Physics Department at SKKU, since 2001. He received Ph. D. from Kent State University in Ohio (1986) in physics. Prior to joining SKKU in 2001, Prof. Lee was a full professor in the Physics Department at Chonbuk National University since 1986. He was a visiting scholar at Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University in 1989, IBM, Zurich in 1993, and Michigan State University in 1996. Currently, he is the Director of Center for Integrated Nanostructure Physics, Institute for Basic Science at SKKU. He serves for an Associate Editor of ACS Nano. He was awarded the first SKKU fellow in 2004 at SKKU, Science award from Korean Physical Society in 2005, Lee Hsun Research Award, IMR, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China in 2007, Presidential Award in Science and Education in 2008 in Korea, and Einstein Award IMR, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China in 2017. He was also nominated as a National Scholar by Ministry of Education in 2006 and has been a fellow of Korean Academy of Science and Technology since 2007. He got Sudang prize in 2015, Kyung Am prize in 2019, and Song-Bong prize in 2020. Prof. Lee’s work has focused on understanding the fundamental properties of low dimensional nanostructures and their hybrid heterostructures, design and synthesis of various heterostructures to implement unique physical and chemical properties. His research covers carrier dynamics,/carrier multiplication/ hot carriers, Bose-Einstein condensation, room-temperature Tc magnetic semiconductors, dissipation-less power electronics. He has published more than 637 scientific papers in international journals and his total citation number exceeds over 67,000 times with H-index of 123 (Google Scholar, Jan. 2022).

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Zhongfan Liu

Peking University, China

Zhongfan Liu completed his PhD from University of Tokyo in 1990 and postdoctoral study from the same university and Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), Japan. His current research interests include the CVD growth, mass production and equipment manufacturing, and unique applications of graphene. He is the founding Director of Beijing Graphene Institute (BGI) and a BOYA chair professor of Peking University. He is the member of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the fellow of TWAS.

Bettina Lotsch

Ludwig Maximillians University

Bettina Valeska Lotsch is Director of the Nanochemistry Department at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (MPI-FKF) in Stuttgart, Germany. She studied Chemistry at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) and the University of Oxford and received her PhD from LMU Munich in 2006. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Toronto she became professor at LMU Munich in 2009 and was appointed Director at MPI-FKF in 2017. She also holds honorary professorships at LMU Munich and the University of Stuttgart, and is PI of the Munich-based Cluster of Excellence e-conversion.

Bettina Lotsch’s research explores the rational synthesis of new materials by combining the tools of molecular, solid-state and nanochemistry. Current research interests include molecular frameworks for solar energy conversion and storage, solid electrolytes for all-solidstate batteries, and “smart” photonic crystals for optical sensing.

Bettina Lotsch was awarded an ERC Starting Grant (2014) and has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2014) and the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (2021). Her work has been recognized by a number of awards, including the EU40 Materials Prize of the EMRS (2017), the CNR Rao Award Lecture (2021), and the Haworth Lecture, University of Birmingham (2021).

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Kian Ping Loh

National University of Singapore, Singapore

Kian Ping Loh completed his Ph.D degree in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, University of Oxford in 1996. He is currently the Provost’s Chair professor in the National University of Singapore and also the Head of 2D Materials Research in the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials. He is also the associate editor of the American Chemical Society journal Chemistry of Materials and serves on the international advisory board of journals such as Advanced Functional Materials, Materials Horizon and 2D Materials. His research interests interface between materials science, chemistry and physics. Recently his team has been studying 2D quantum materials, which include 2-D hybrid perovskites, Weyl semimetals and other topological materials. K. P. Loh was conferred the President’s Science Award in Singapore in 2014 and the American Chemical Society’s ACS Nano Lecture award in 2013. He currently has a google Hirsch index of 107 and has been on Clavirate’s highly cited list for Chemistry, Physics and Materials Science.

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Cecilia Mattevi

Imperial College London, UK

Dr. Cecilia Mattevi is a Reader and Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London. Dr Cecilia Mattevi received her Laurea degree in Materials Science and a PhD in Materials Science from the University of Padua. After a postdoctoral appointment at Rutgers University, Cecilia joined the Materials Department at Imperial College London, becoming a Junior Research Fellow in 2010. Cecilia is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and she is a recipient of an ERC-Consolidator grant award. Her research interest focuses on the precise synthesis of 2D materials and their three-dimensional structuring in the form of miniaturized devices to address pressing challenges in energy storage, energy conversion and nanoelectronics.

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Katherine Mirica

Dartmouth College, USA

Katherine was born and raised in Ukraine and emigrated with her family to the United States as a high school student. She obtained her B.S. in Chemistry at Boston College, where she developed a passion for Materials Chemistry, working in the laboratory of Lawrence T. Scott. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University under the guidance of George M. Whitesides and completed her postdoctoral training with Timothy M. Swager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Katherine began her independent scientific career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Dartmouth College in 2015 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2021. Her research focuses on the development of multifunctional materials using methods of bottom-up chemical synthesis and self-assembly for solving challenges in electroanalysis, microelectronics, and energy. She is a recipient of the Army Research Office Young Investigator Award (2017), Sloan Research Fellowship (2018), PMSE Young Investigator Award (2018), 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award (2018), Cottrell Scholar Award (2019), NSF CAREER Award (2020), Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2020), and NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (2020).

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Valeria Nicolosi

Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Professor Valeria Nicolosi is the Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy at the School of Chemistry in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and a Principal Investigator in the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centres AMBER & I-Form. She is the TCD Director of the EPSRC/SFI Centre of Doctoral Training in n the Advanced Characterisation of Materials.

She received a BSc (Hons) in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Catania (Italy) and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Dublin, Trinity College in 2006. She moved to the University of Oxford in February 2008 as a Marie Curie Fellow, to work in the field of advanced electron microscopy. In April 2008 she was awarded with a Royal Academy of Engineering/EPSRC Fellowship.

In 2012 she returned to Trinity College Dublin as Research Professor. In 2016 she was promoted to Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy. She is the first woman to have reached the position of Chair in the School of Chemistry since the foundation of Trinity College Dublin in 1592.

Prof. Nicolosi is a 7 times ERC awardee (€1.5m Starting Grant in 2011, followed by 3 Proof-of-Concept top-up grants to bring results of frontier research closer to the market, a €2.5m Consolidator Grant in 2016, followed by 2 further PoC grant in 2019 and 2022).

Over the past years, Prof. Nicolosi has published more than 200 high-impact-papers, including Science, Nature, Nature Energy, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Materials amongst the others, and delivered more than 150 invited and plenary presentations at major conferences/institutions/public events. Prof. Nicolosi’s research has attracted more than 25 M euro funding over the last 8 years.

In 2018, 2019 and 2020 and 2021 she was recognized as one of the world's most influential researchers of the past decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science.

She has won numerous awards: the RDS/Intel Prize for Nanoscience 2012, the World Economic Forum Young Scientist 2013, EU Woman in Technology Award 2013, SFI President of Ireland Young Researcher Award 2014, SFI Irish Early Stage Researcher 2016, TCD ERC Awardee 2017, Women Business Forum Women of the Decade in Science & Innovation 2018. Prof. Nicolosi served as Advisory Board member of the European Innovation Council (EIC) from 2019 to 2021. As a recognition of her carrier achievements, In 2021 Prof. Nicolosi was conferred the honourary deco

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Konstantin Novoselov

National University of Singapore, Singapore

Prof Sir Konstantin ‘Kostya’ Novoselov FRS was born in Russia in August 1974. He has both British and Russian citizenship. He is best known for isolating graphene at The University of Manchester in 2004, and is an expert in condensed matter physics, mesoscopic physics and nanotechnology. Every year since 2014 Kostya Novoselov is included in the list of the most highly cited researchers in the world. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 for his achievements with graphene. Kostya holds positions of Langworthy Professor of Physics and the Royal Society Research Professor at The University of Manchester.

He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and undertook his PhD studies at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands before moving to The University of Manchester in 2001. Professor Novoselov has published more than 250 peer-reviewed research papers. He was awarded with numerous prizes, including Nicholas Kurti Prize (2007), International Union of Pure and Applied Science Prize (2008), MIT Technology Review young innovator (2008), Europhysics Prize (2008), Bragg Lecture Prize from the Union of Crystallography (2011), the Kohn Award Lecture (2012), Leverhulme Medal from the Royal Society (2013), Onsager medal (2014), Carbon medal (2016), Dalton medal (2016) among many others. He was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours.

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Martin Pumera

UTC Prague, Czechia

Martin Pumera is the Director of the Center for the Advanced Functional Nanorobots and a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, and Chief Investigator of Future Energy & Innovation Laboratory at Central European Institute of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic. He received his Ph.D. at Charles University, Czech Republic, in 2001. After two postdoctoral stays (in the United States and Spain), he became a tenured group leader at the National Institute for Materials Science, Japan, in 2006. In 2010 Martin joined Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he worked as a tenured associate professor for almost a decade. Prof. Pumera has broad interests in nanomaterials and microsystems, in the specific areas of electrochemistry and synthetic chemistry of 2D nanomaterials, nanotoxicity, micro and nanomachines, and 3D printing. Martin is “2017, 2018 and 2019 Highly Cited Researcher” by Clarivate Analytics (as the only chemist in the Czech Republic). He published over 680 papers which received more than 30,000 citations. Martin's h-index is 91. Martin has supervised over 30 PhD students, 8 Master students and over 50 BSc students. Total funding Martin received as PI is over 18 M EURO (current active funding 14.8 M EURO). Prof. Pumera is Editor-in-Chief of Appl. Mater. Today (IF 10) and member of Editorial Boards of ACS Nano, Small, Chem Eur J, Electrochem Commun, ChemElectroChem, Electroanalysis and other journals.

Martin is Highly Cited Research 2017-2021 by Clarivate Analytics, the most cited scientist of the Czech Republic and #203 most cited scientist in the World for year 2019.

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Sahar Sharifzadeh

Boston University, USA

Dr. Sahar Sharifzadeh is an Associate Professor at Boston University. She obtained her PhD from Princeton University, working under the guidance of Prof. Emily Carter, and subsequently joined the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow and project scientist in the group of Dr. Jeffrey Neaton. She joined Boston University in 2014 as an Assistant Professor. Prof. Sharifzadeh was awarded the Department of Energy Early Career Award in 2017, the National Science Foundation Early Career Award in 2019, and the Boston University College of Engineering Early Career Award in 2019. Her research focuses on first-principles computational modelling of materials.

Yongfu Sun

University of Science & Technology of China (USTC)

Dr. Yongfu Sun is the full professor of materials chemistry, University of Science & Technology of China (USTC). He received his BSc from Anhui University in 2006 and PhD from USTC in 2011. After two-year postdoctoral research in National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, he started his independent research career at Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, USTC since July 2013.

He pioneered the use of 2D materials to promote the photo/electrocatalytic efficiencies of water splitting and CO2 reduction. His outstanding research endows the support by “National Science Fund For Outstanding Young Scholars” in 2021, “Fok Ying-Tong Education Foundation for Young Teachers in the Higher Education Institutions of China” in 2018, “Changjiang Young Scholars” of the Ministry of Education in 2016 and “National Science Foundation of China for Excellent Young Scholars” in 2014. Also he wins several prestigious awards including the First-class Prize of Natural Science Award of Anhui Province in 2019 (1st accomplisher), Chinese Chemical Society Prize for Young Scientists (2016), Young Cutting-Edge Nanochemistry Researcher Award by Chinese Chemical Society (2016) and Lu Jiaxi Young Scientists Award by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2015). Some of his work was selected as “China’s top 10 scientific advance in 2016”, “China’s Top One Hundred Most Influential International papers in 2016” and "Major Achievements on the Huge Basic Infrastructure of Science and Technology" by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2012.

Dr. Yongfu Sun has published more than 70 scientific papers in international journals, including more than 30 in top journals such as Nature, Nature Energy, Nature Commun., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Adv. Mater., Adv. Energy Mater., and Joule as the first and corresponding author. He has been invited to contribute 6 review articles for top international journals such as Chem. Soc. Rev. and Acc. Chem. Res. His publications have been extensively cited by more than 10000 times, 24 of which have been selected as the Top 1% ESI highly cited papers.

Luisa Whittaker-Brooks

University of Utah, USA

Luisa Whittaker-Brooks is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Utah. Her research centers on the design of well-defined hybrid materials with controlled morphology and interfaces that serve as conduits for deterministic and coherent energy and charge transfer for applications in energy conversion, storage, and electronics. Dr. Whittaker-Brooks received her B.S. degree in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Panama. Under a Fulbright Fellowship, she received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Chemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University. She was the recipient of the 2013 L’Oréal Fellowship for Women in Science Award and the 2015 Marion Milligan Mason Award for Women in the Chemical Sciences administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She was named a Scialog and Cottrell Fellow by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), a Talented 12 by C&En news, and a GERA Ovshinsky Energy Fellow by the American Physical Society (APS). She is also the recipient of a Department of Energy Early Career Award, a Sloan Fellowship in Chemistry, and the Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award.

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Boris Yakobson

Rice University, USA

Boris I. Yakobson is an expert in theory and computational modeling of materials and nanostructures, of synthesis, mechanics, defects, transport, electronics, optics. Presently, Karl F. Hasselmann Endowed Chair in Engineering, professor of Materials Science and Nano-Engineering, and professor of Chemistry, Rice University, Houston, Texas. Boris was born in Moscow (USSR), raised in Odessa (Ukraine), obtained first BS/MS degrees in Novosibirsk (Russia), PhD 1982 in Physics and Applied Mathematics, from Russian Academy of Sciences. 1982-1989, Head of Theoretical Chemistry lab at the Institute of Solid Materials of the Russian Academy. 1990 in Columbia University, New York, Chemistry. 1990-1999, Research Professor, with tenure at the Department of Physics, North Carolina State University. Boris’ insight in nano-mechanics has set off a close collaboration with Richard Smalley (Nobel Laureate, 1996), and in 1999 Yakobson joined Rice’s School of Engineering. (One aspect of that early study gave rise to what became known in literature “Yakobson Paradox”.) Over 450 papers, eight patents; US Department of Energy Hydrogen Program Award, NASA Nano 50 Innovator Award, Royal Society Professorship Award, Department of Energy R&D Award, NASA Faculty Award. Mentors PhD students and postdoctoral associates, plays piano and enjoys travel, at normal times.

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Jamie Warner

The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Jamie Warner is the Hayden Head Centennial Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He join UT Austin in January 2020 to lead the new Electron Microscopy Facility located in the Texas Materials Institute and the Cockrell School of Engineering. Prior to this he spent 13 years in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford, where he held the position of Professor of Materials and led the Nanostructured Materials Group. His research focuses on the next generation of nanostructured materials with unique properties that will impact electronic, opto-electronic, and energy applications. The core foundation of his research is on the atomic level structure and dynamics of nanomaterials realized through state-of-the-art aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy and spectroscopy. 2D materials have been the focus of research for the past decade.

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Hua Zhang

City University of Hong Kong, China

Dr. Hua Zhang is the Herman Hu Chair Professor of Nanomaterials at City University of Hong Kong. His current research interests focus on phase engineering of nanomaterials (PEN) and controlled epitaxial growth of heterostructures, in particular, the synthesis of ultrathin two-dimensional nanomaterials and metallic nanomaterials with unconventional crystal phases and amorphous structures, for applications in catalysis, clean energy, (opto-)electronic devices, chemical and biosensors, and water remediation. He was Assistant/Associate/Full Professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (2006–2019). His honors and awards include the Foreign Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (2020), Academician of the Asia Pacific Academy of Materials (2015), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2014), "Highly Cited Researchers" (Clarivate Analytics) in Chemistry (2015-2021) and in Materials Science (2014-2021), one of 19 “Hottest Researchers of Today” (2015) and one of 17 “Hottest Researchers of Today” (2014) in the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds (Thomson Reuters), Vice-Chancellor’s International Scholar Award (University of Wollongong, Australia, 2016), ACS Nano Lectureship Award (2015), World Cultural Council Special Recognition Award (2013), the ONASSIA Foundation Lectureship (Greece, 2013), SMALL Young Innovator Award (Wiley-VCH, 2012), Nanyang Award for Research Excellence (2011), etc.

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Yanfeng Zhang

Peking University, China

Yanfeng Zhang is a full professor of the School of Materials Science and Engineering of Peking University. She received her PhD from the Institute of Physics in the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2005. Later on, she worked as a JSPS fellow from 2006 to 2009 in Tohoku University, Japan.

Her research interests relate to the controlled growth, accurate characterization and novel property exploration of two-dimensional layered materials such as graphene, h-BN–graphene heterostructures, and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) and their heterostructures. Prof. Zhang has published over 200 papers in Science, Phys. Rev. Lett., Nat. Commun., Adv. Mater., etc. in her research career. All the papers are non-self-cited by over 10000 times. In 2012, she won the support of “National Natural Science Foundation for Excellent Young Scholar” from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). In 2019, she obtained the support of “National Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholar” from NSFC. She was also enrolled in the “Youth Project of the Yangtze River Scholar” in 2015.

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